Postcards from the South

Sharks and bad lunch decisions and forgotten plans and summer reading. And Conor McGregor, inexplicably.

me in my delightful (if skimpy) Jessica Simpson bikini from Walmart

We start the drive to Knoxville on a scorching hot Thursday in July, setting off at 8.09am. I imagine the nine minutes were very frustrating for my husband, who likes to do things exactly as planned. “If we say we’re leaving at a certain time…” he has said to me, more than once, as I busy myself rushing around the house to grab sippy cups and extra nappies and towels and whatever it is we need that day for our children, who number four but seem, outside the house, to have the needs of a dozen or more kids, at least.

I tell Brandin that it’s important to think of this drive as a road trip, rather than a drive. Knoxville is the destination, but we’re making a day of it, I tell him; we’ll stop as many times as we need to stop, to feed the baby or to change the toddler or for our 10-year-old (the 12-year-old is staying with his mom; he has his first marching band parade and doesn’t want to miss it) to go to the toilet or to stretch his legs, or whatever it is 10-year-olds think they need, on an almost-eight-hour drive across America.

We’ve planned to stop after three-and-a-half hours, in Cincinatti, to go to the aquarium. I’d suggested the zoo – our membership to Fort Wayne Zoo offers us discounts at various other zoos nationwide, so it seemed like a good idea – but Brandin rightly pointed out that the aquarium will be air conditioned, and neither one of us wants to walk around in 34-degree heat only to get back in the car for another four hours’ drive afterwards.

He was right, of course; the aquarium is air conditioned, and we have quite a calm walk around with the children. They have good baby-changing facilities, and sharks – a must for our three-year-old, who simply will not be satisfied with jellyfish or turtles or poisonous frogs, demanding, non-stop, to see the sharks – but what we hadn’t factored in was the cost. Adult tickets are $39; children over the age of two are $29. We spend the guts of $140 to see these sharks.

“Did you check the prices?” Brandin asks, accusingly, and I’m momentarily stunned that he thinks I would consider doing such a thing. I think I might suffer from money-blindness – I never know how much anything costs until I’m at the till, and even then I barely pay attention. (You probably could have suspected as much.)

After our trip through the aquarium, we go for lunch at a place called Brothers, which the internet tells me is good for kids.

“That place is terrible,” Brandin says, when I share the plan – and I am, of course, enraged by his dismissal.

“If you,” I tell him, angrily, “want to do some research and make a plan for lunch then feel free.”

He doesn’t, so we go to Brothers. It is terrible.